


come back and haunt me

by spacebubble



Series: Quodo Moods Mixtape [5]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, First Kiss, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-13 15:17:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9130150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacebubble/pseuds/spacebubble
Summary: Quark is tired of waiting. He travels to the Gamma Quadrant to collect on Odo’s bar tab. It’s almost like a fairy tale, but less romantic. Or is it?(Spoiler alert: things get shamelessly sincere.)





	

Endless summer is the closest approximation to a season on the Changelings’ homeworld. The Great Link is perpetually bathed in ochers and golds during the daytime. Sunlight bounces off the ocean of beings back into the sky in an endless feedback of warm color.

At dusk, a small creature beams onto the island in the middle of the Link.

He carries with him an angular device, from which he makes a point of reading, or pretending to read, before he looks out into the vastness.

“I am Quark,” he proclaims grandly, “and I am here to collect on a debt owed to me by one of your people.”

He clears his throat and waits.

After a few minutes, he adds, less grandly, “Just to clarify, Odo owes me for that drink he said he bought for me.” He waves the padd theatrically, then further clarifies: “Back when the baby Changeling learned how to make a face?”

A gentle rustle of goo flows back and forth on the ocean of the Great Link.

Quark cocks his head, as if hoping to recognize a sound amongst the waves.

No reply greets him.

“Baby changeling,” Quark repeats, like an incantation, a password.

He waits for something magical to occur.

When nothing happens, he sits down on the island.

“Face?” he whispers half-heartedly.

Sighing, he draws his knees up to his chest, then rests his folded arms on top of his knees.

“I demand recompense,” he says into the void. “Not that it’s a big deal or whatever, but he owes me that much.”

He has a bag of supplies with him, and comm access to his ship. He has left his messages and he has notified the appropriate authorities. Heroes never seem to take the proper precautions.

He can wait.

 

* * *

 

It’s the second day and Quark has yet to see anyone. Or anything, besides the blandly beautiful ocean and sky, both reflecting the same warm golden light unto each other.

The beauty is monotonous in its lack of variety. Only the island he sits upon interrupts the sameness that surrounds him.

He checks in with his ship occasionally to check the time.

He gets up every once in a while, sits some other times, naps every so often. He trusts that his ears will alert him if anyone approaches. It’s an old habit from his freighter cook days.

As an experiment, he spends the day in silence. He amuses himself with calculations and complex equations on his padd. He composes letters he does not intend to send. All the while, he rehearses his big confrontation speech, the one he intends to perform when he sees Odo again.

Hours pass and the sun begins to set.

He revises the “when” to “if,” and tells himself he’ll give Odo another day, at the very least.

Only the light sloshing of waves, voiceless and gentle, disrupts the persistent silence.

It’s a long day to be alone.

 

* * *

 

On the third day, he gives speaking another shot.

If nothing, he might as well give Odo the chance to catch up on what has happened in his absence.

He relays all the possible updates he can think of regarding the station’s denizens, starting with Colonel Kira’s latest relationship and ending with Morn’s latest gossip. It takes him longer than he anticipated to run through the list of people Odo used to know.

At the end, he mentions a desperate act, a last resort, a gamble he has never attempted again: appealing to Sisko for help.

The vision Quark had received was not unkind. Sisko had been glad to see him, but had informed him very plainly that the Prophets do not grant such wishes, and Quark should return the Orb to where he had found it. Sisko, for his part, would return in his due time. He hinted that Odo would do that same.

Silence is all that greets him, the little bartender with no bar to tend here, as he sits on the island and talks to no one he can see.

He wonders if the Link sits in judgment of him, smug in its censure, aloof as ever.

Having exhausted all his energy, he lies down on the island and stares up into the golden atmosphere. It’s an unusual sight. Ferenginar’s skies never looked like that.

It occurs to him how far away he is from home, and how far behind he has left it, in more ways than one.

The thought doesn’t bother him as much as it used to do. He has grown to accept that home, for him, is not so much a place as it is a feeling. He suspects he may be doomed to wander forever until he finds that feeling again.

“Odo,” he says into the sky. “Don’t you miss it?”

There’s no response.

He hedges one last bet:

“Don’t you miss me?”

At that, a sliver of ocean arches into the sky and lands onto the spot of island near Quark.

Quark hears the movement before he sees it.

He sits up, curious.

The puddle of ocean pools and congeals onto the ground until it forms into a man. The man wears Odo’s face, but Quark hesitates, waiting, not sure if it’s really him.

They look at each other.

“What do you want, Quark?”

Quark blinks. There’s an element of affection in the Changeling’s voice that feels fresh and foreign, like the first mist of rain after a long, dry winter. It washes away his previous plans and leaves behind a clean slate.

He continues watching Odo, or what might be the ghost of Odo, as the Changeling walks over to him.

The Changeling crouches down. He gently rests his hand against Quark’s cheek. The gesture feels less like affection and more like an investigation, a tentative interrogation through touch. Perhaps an attempt to verify Quark’s solidity.

Quark doesn’t rule out the possibility of affection. Gambling never benefits from ignoring possibilities.

Still, the feeling is strange. He can’t remember what Odo’s hand feels like. 

He shakes off the hand. “Are you really Odo? You look like him, but are you really him?”

Odo looks back at him, an unreadable expression on his face. “How can I prove that I am myself?”

“I don’t know,” Quark says. He hesitates to answer further, fearing the consequences of a wrong reply. “How can you?”

Odo holds his gaze, unblinking. “Maybe I never can.”

A quiet fear grips Quark at that moment, like the soft touch of a hesitant hand, reaching for his heart.

He had often wondered about the possibility of Odo losing himself to the Link, and here was that possibility, knocking at his door.

He wonders what would happen if he starts to describe how Odo might prove his identity, whether the Changeling before him might shape himself to fit the parameters Quark specifies. Whether Odo’s secrets have been diffused and scattered throughout the entire Link. If he asks for Odo to tell him something that only the two of them would know, would it be an impossible task?

If he asks for Odo as Odo was before, would Odo still be himself, or merely the Link’s idea of Odo?

And what would that idea be?

The questions stockpile in his mind and the little bartender shakes his head to empty it.

“I don’t know what to do,” Quark admits.

Odo looks at him and doesn’t say anything in reply. Quark desperately tries to listen for any familiar rustle of goo noise that can provide him with a hint of the Odo he used to know.

He’s never told Odo he could hear Odo’s goo noises, and wonders if it even matters anymore.

He listens and hears nothing but the beating of his own heart, pulsing steadily in his ears, and the cryptic waves of the Great Link - distinctly different than the sound of Odo’s inner self.  

Odo reaches out and touches his shoulder. When Quark doesn’t shake off the hand, Odo extends the touch into a gentle push, until Quark slowly falls backwards, looking up at the face he used to see every day.

His face grows hot as his back hits the ground. He watches Odo kneel beside him, palm resting on Quark’s shoulder, crouching over him like a bird of prey, peering at him inquisitively.

Quark bets on one possibility. He reaches up to curl his hand around the back of Odo’s neck.

“What are you doing?” Odo asks abruptly. His hand slips off Quark’s shoulder to brace himself against the ground by Quark’s head and prevent himself from dipping any lower.

“I thought we were going to make out,” Quark says simply.

Something shifts in Odo’s face. He smiles wryly. “Make out? I was setting you down on the ground so you could rest.” He adds, “You are tired.”

“I am,” Quark says. He doesn’t remove his hand from behind Odo’s neck. Odo doesn’t remove it either.

The sun is setting.

Quark yawns. He watches the color fade from the sky. The waning light basks Odo’s features in coral and flame. He flexes his fingers behind Odo’s neck and ruffles the ends of Odo’s hair. The strands feel like silk - too smooth to belong to a normal humanoid’s, spun too fine.

“Do you remember being Odo?” Quark asks. A thought inspires him. “Maybe making out with me could help jog your memory.”

The smile on Odo’s face turns into a laugh. “We never ‘made out,’ Quark.”

Slight sarcasm punctuates Odo’s words in a familiar cadence that finally puts Quark at ease.

Quark grins. “We did share a blanket though.”

“And a jacket and trousers,” Odo recites from memory. “But not simultaneously,” he takes care to add. His eyes are alight, merry with an otherworldly mischief. He seems like a spirit awoken from a deep enchantment.

The sunset blazes across Quark’s face as he watches the Changeling hover over him, their bodies casting long shadows out onto the island.

An errant ray of light glints off the edge of Quark’s padd, which he had set aside hours ago.

“Quark,” Odo says, glancing at the padd, “did you really come to collect on my bar tab?”

“Sure,” Quark replies.

“And how much do I owe you?”

Quark shrugs. He drums his fingertips on the back of Odo’s neck, tapping thrice. “Three slips of latinum.”

Odo arches a nonexistent eyebrow. “You came all the way out here to the Gamma Quadrant for three slips of latinum?”

“It was more of a gamble than anything.”

“And what were you betting on?”

Quark’s voice shrinks down to its core, small and sincere. “You, I guess.”

Odo tilts his head. “You’ve waited days to see me.”

“Years, actually.”

Odo regards Quark with a fond gaze. “You’ve been waiting a long time.”

“Guess I have.”

“There’s no money in the Great Link, Quark.”

“You can come back to the station with me and work it off,” Quark suggests hopefully. “Maybe as a bouncer?”

The sun goes down and Odo lowers himself onto Quark, tangling their legs together, his hands caressing Quark’s face as tenderly as Quark’s hand caresses the back of his neck.

“I’ve got a better idea,” Odo says, and he meets Quark’s mouth with his own.

They kiss as dusk falls. Quark swears it’s magic.

“That’s not a payment,” Odo clarifies once they break apart, his hands cradling Quark’s blissful face. “I’m returning to the station with you, and that is also not a payment.”

Quark weighs the words and their implications. “Fair enough,” he concludes, before pulling Odo back down.

They kiss again as dusk gives way to night. Odo bears down upon him gently, almost calculatingly so, until Quark teases out a hint of ferality with his tongue and Odo rewards him with wildness.

Night falls and Quark lies breathless underneath Odo’s smiling presence. Home feels like a place he can return to again.

Healer of his people, task completed, Odo is ready to join his future.

They are each other’s hard won prize, beheld in faint starlight, in the chill of the evening.

It'd be warmer on the runabout. Quark taps his combadge.

“Computer, two to beam up.”

They vanish into the stars, bartender and constable tamed together, and live happily ever after.

**Author's Note:**

> 100% self-indulgence, so weird how this keeps happening


End file.
